»»NASA TV to Air Space Shuttle Commander Remarks on 10th Anniversary of Inaugural Station Assembly Flight

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] In honor of the 10th anniversary of the first construction flight for the International Space Station, NASA Television will provide sound bites and video b-roll featuring the commander of that space shuttle mission.

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] After nearly a month of daily checks to determine whether Martian NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander would be able to communicate again, the agency has stopped using its Mars orbiters to hail the lander and listen for its beep.

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) announces the addition of two DragonLab missions to its manifest, as a result of demand from a successful workshop held at SpaceX headquarters on November 6 to introduce the new DragonLab product.

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] Certain turning points in the history of space flight must have had an impact: Sputnik, the moon landing, Space Shuttle disasters, and so on are etched in memory for better or worse. But unpacking the nature and extent of that impact is no simple task.

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] In November 2007 NASA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to evaluate the potential for new science opportunities enabled by the Constellation System of rockets and spacecraft.

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] Sparkling away at magnitude 3.7 and appearing nearly as large as the full moon on the southern night sky, Omega Centauri is visible with the unaided eye from a clear, dark observing site

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] NASA has signed a $141 million modification to the current International Space Station contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency for crew transportation services planned through the spring of 2012.

[Tuesday, December 2, 2008] Manipulation of the visual perspective, in combination with the receipt of correlated multisensory information from the body was sufficient to trigger the illusion that another person's body or an artificial body was one's own.

[Wednesday, December 3, 2008] Astronomers have uncovered strong evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars. Using the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA), they detected molecules of carbon monoxide shooting outward from the object known as ISO-Oph 102.

[Wednesday, December 3, 2008] The Arctic is undergoing rapid transformation due to climate change, pollution and human activity. ESA's ERS and Envisat satellites have been providing satellite data of the region for the last 17 years.

[Wednesday, December 3, 2008] A pale yellow dot to the human eye, Earth's twin planet comes to life in the ultraviolet and the infrared. New images taken by instruments on board ESA's Venus Express provide insight into the turbulent atmosphere of our neighbouring planet.

[Wednesday, December 3, 2008] NASA will hold a briefing at noon EST, Thursday, Dec. 4, about the agency's Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL. The briefing will take place in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, S.W., Washington.

[Wednesday, December 3, 2008] Goodyear and the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) recently completed a jointly-funded project for the development and production of twelve replicates of the original wire-mesh moon tire used on the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle in the early 1970s.

[Wednesday, December 3, 2008] NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale announced Wednesday her intent to resign from the agency, effective Jan. 17, 2009, in advance of the new administration coming into office. She has served as NASA's second-in-command since November 2005.

[Thursday, December 4, 2008] NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will launch two years later than previously planned, in the fall of 2011. The mission will send a next-generation rover with unprecedented research tools to study the early environmental history of Mars.

[Thursday, December 4, 2008] Climate cycles persisting for millions of years on ancient Mars left a record of rhythmic patterns in thick stacks of sedimentary rock layers, revealed in three-dimensional detail by a telescopic camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[Thursday, December 4, 2008] MESSENGER completed the first part of a two-part deep-space maneuver today, providing the expected 90% of the velocity change needed to place the spacecraft on course to fly by Mercury for the third time in September 2009.

[Thursday, December 4, 2008] Three undergraduate students, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, have discovered an extrasolar planet. The extraordinary find, which turned up during their research project, is about five times as massive as Jupiter.

[Friday, December 5, 2008] Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, Hubble catches an instantaneous glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13, one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky.

[Saturday, December 6, 2008] A National Security Space Office study concluded in October of 2007 that "The magnitude of the looming energy and environmental problems is significant enough to warrant consideration of all options, to include ... space-based solar power."

[Monday, December 8, 2008] "I want to talk about how and why NASA not only should, but must, pursue and nurture appropriate partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector when it is reasonably within the grasp of such firms to meet our needs."

[Monday, December 8, 2008] NASA has assigned the crews for space shuttle missions STS-130 and STS-131. The STS-130 mission will deliver a third connecting module to the International Space Station and a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics.

»»Jump Into Space With NASA's Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope Interactive Exhibit in Pittsburgh

[Monday, December 8, 2008] NASA's Hubble exhibit now has a companion, an interactive exhibit on the James Webb Space Telescope -- and it's now in Pittsburgh for all to see. Visitors will be able to experience how the Webb telescope will work, through computer games, videos and disp

[Monday, December 8, 2008] The High Resolution Science Imaging Experiment, or HiRISE, team based at The University of Arizona today released 362 three-dimensional images of Mars taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[Tuesday, December 9, 2008] MESSENGER completed the second part of a two-part deep-space maneuver today, providing the remaining 10% velocity change needed to place the probe on course to fly by Mercury for the third time in September 2009.

[Tuesday, December 9, 2008] Ronald Sugar has called for a national initiative to transform the global climate data being collected by various earth observation systems into the practical, decision-quality knowledge needed to address the challenges of global climate change.

[Tuesday, December 9, 2008] NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This is an important step along the trail of finding the chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life as we know it.

[Wednesday, December 10, 2008] Just days after the successful full mission-length test firing of the nine-engine first stage of Falcon 9, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) marked another significant advance with the performance of its smallest rocket engine, Draco.

[Wednesday, December 10, 2008] The aerospace industry is showing resiliency in trying economic times, ending 2008 with modest growth and continued strength in important areas like foreign trade balance and employment, AIA announced Wednesday.

[Wednesday, December 10, 2008] Astronomers will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Dec. 16 at 1 p.m. EST to announce important new results on dark energy that were made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

[Wednesday, December 10, 2008] The two faintest star-like objects ever found, a pair of twin "brown dwarfs" each just a millionth as bright as the sun, have been spotted by a team led by MIT physicist Adam Burgasser.

[Wednesday, December 10, 2008] The first of 18 mirror segments that will fly on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope arrived this week at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. to prepare it to meet the extreme temperatures it will encounter in space.

»»UH Astronomer Uses Ultra-Sensitive Camera to Measure the Size of a Planet Orbiting a Distant Star

[Wednesday, December 10, 2008] A team of astronomers led by John Johnson of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy has used a new technique to measure the precise size of a planet around a distant star.

[Thursday, December 11, 2008] In a 16-year long study, using several of ESO's flagship telescopes, a team of German astronomers has produced the most detailed view ever of the surroundings of the monster lurking at our Galaxy's heart - a supermassive black hole. (With video)

[Thursday, December 11, 2008] NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year science phase. The spacecraft has found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments.

[Thursday, December 11, 2008] The X PRIZE Foundation will reveal the identities of a "Mystery Team" competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE during a media briefing hosted at NASA's Ames Research Center on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008.

[Friday, December 12, 2008] Today's arrival of space shuttle Endeavour at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida will be seen only on NASA Television's Public Channel (101). System maintenance is being performed on the media (103) and education (102) channels.

»»Outliving expectations: Marisat-F2 satellite held on for 32 years, served South Pole for 8

[Friday, December 12, 2008] Concluding 32 years of distinguished service for global communications, one of three aged communications satellites used to connect South Pole Station to the rest of the world was decommissioned on Oct. 29 after eight years of service to the station.

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] Challenger Center for Space Science Education presents new science demonstration videos for students filmed on board the International Space Station (ISS) by Richard Garriott.

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] The final four Europeans who are set to take part in a 105-day simulated Mars mission were presented to the media in Paris today. From March next year, two of the group will join four Russian participants inside an isolation facility in Moscow.

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] Data and images from Mars Express suggest that several Light Toned Deposits, some of the least understood features on Mars, were formed when large amounts of groundwater burst on to the surface.

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] Moons outside our Solar System with the potential to support life have just become much easier to detect, thanks to research by an astronomer at University College London (UCL).

»»Planet formation could lie in stellar storms rather than gravitational instability

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] New research suggests that turbulence plays a critical role in creating ripe conditions for the birth of planets. The study, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, challenges the prevailing theory of planet formation.

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] Soaring high above the Earth, the crew of the ISS has beamed down season's greetings that will air on NASA Television starting Friday, Dec. 12. The public can return the extraterrestrial good will and send greetings to the crew by visiting:

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] Combining a double natural "magnifying glass" with the power of ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have scrutinised the inner parts of the disc around a supermassive black hole 10 billion light-years away.

[Saturday, December 13, 2008] Enormous stars in 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, are producing intense radiation and searing winds of multimillion-degree gas that carve out gigantic bubbles in the surrounding cooler gas and dust.

[Sunday, December 14, 2008] I've got a news flash for you: there are a lot of nerds at NASA and our industrial partners. And if national surveys provide any indication, then our nation likes our nerds.

[Monday, December 15, 2008] NASA landed on Mars, photographed distant worlds, added to the Space Station, took part in a lunar science mission with India and made major progress toward returning astronauts to the moon as the agency celebrated its 50th birthday in 2008.

»»Space Has Never Been Closer: NASA Instruments Document Contraction of the Boundary between the Earthís Ionosphere and Space

[Monday, December 15, 2008] Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes.

[Monday, December 15, 2008] Solar flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar system. Packing a punch equal to a hundred million hydrogen bombs, they obliterate everything in their immediate vicinity. Not a single atom should remain intact.

[Monday, December 15, 2008] The closer scientists look at Saturn's small moon Enceladus, the more they find evidence of an active world. The most recent flybys of Enceladus made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have provided new signs of ongoing changes on and around the moon.

[Monday, December 15, 2008] The Martian arctic soil that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander dug into this year is very cold and very dry. However, when long-term climate cycles make the site warmer, the soil may get moist enough to modify the chemistry.

[Monday, December 15, 2008] The New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) received its launch license for vertical and horizontal launch from the Federal Aviation Administration's Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST).

[Tuesday, December 16, 2008] A new study shows the periodic "breathing" of Earth's upper atmosphere is due in part to cyclic solar wind disturbances, a finding that should help engineers track satellites more accurately and improve forecasts for electronic communication disruptions.

[Tuesday, December 16, 2008] Data collected during several recent flybys of Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have put another arrow in the quiver of scientists who think the Saturnian moon contains active cryovolcanoes spewing a super-chilled liquid into its atmosphere.

[Tuesday, December 16, 2008] Scientists are expanding the search for extraterrestrial life and they've set their sights on some very unearthly planets. Cold "Super-Earths" giant, "snowball" planets that astronomers have spied on the outskirts of faraway solar systems.

[Wednesday, December 17, 2008] XCOR Aerospace, Inc., announced today that it has successfully completed its first test fire of the rocket engine that will be used to power its Lynx suborbital launch vehicle to the edge of space.

[Wednesday, December 17, 2008] Earth's magnetic field, which shields our planet from particles streaming outward from the Sun, often develops two holes that allow the largest leaks, according to researchers sponsored by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

[Wednesday, December 17, 2008] NGC 2264 lies about 2600 light-years from Earth in the obscure constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn, not far from the more familiar figure of Orion, the Hunter. The image shows a region of space about 30 light-years across.

[Wednesday, December 17, 2008] Oceanography data that will help scientists around the world better understand climate change are now available. The data come from the Ocean Surface Topography Mission, also known as OSTM/Jason-2.

[Wednesday, December 17, 2008] For the first time, astronomers have clearly seen the effects of "dark energy" on the most massive collapsed objects in the universe using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

[Thursday, December 18, 2008] Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long-sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past.

»»Water detected at record distance with the Effelsberg 100 m radio telescope

[Thursday, December 18, 2008] A research group led by graduate student Violette Impellizzeri from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has used the 100 m Effelsberg radio telescope to detect water at the greatest distance from Earth so far.

[Thursday, December 18, 2008] Please find below paragraphs provided by participating NASA centers advertising their student programs. Please share it with students who might be interested in participating.

[Thursday, December 18, 2008] Venus Express has made the first detection of an atmospheric loss process on Venus's day-side. Last year, the spacecraft revealed that most of the lost atmosphere escapes from the night-side.

[Friday, December 19, 2008] At the April 2008 SMC meeting, eight members of the next generation community attended to discuss the long-term strategic effects on the NASA mission of current hiring practices and and specific actions.

[Friday, December 19, 2008] Two former science teachers, who are now fully-trained NASA astronauts, will make their first journey into orbit on space shuttle Discovery's upcoming mission to the International Space Station.

[Saturday, December 20, 2008] NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet.

[Saturday, December 20, 2008] High in the Atacama region of northern Chile one of the world's most advanced telescopes has just passed a major milestone. The first of many state-of-the-art antennas has been handed over to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array project.

[Sunday, December 21, 2008] The planet's present day greenhouse scourge, carbon dioxide, may have played a vital role in helping ancient Earth to escape from complete glaciation, say scientists in a paper published online today.

[Monday, December 22, 2008] The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us, but spare a thought for a team of scientists forgoing the festive season to take part in a novel campaign being carried out in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth.

[Monday, December 22, 2008] In 3.5 billion years, life on earth went from single microscopic cells to giant sequoias and blue whales. Scientists have now documented quantitatively that the increase in maximum size of organisms was not gradual, but happened in two distinct bursts.

[Monday, December 22, 2008] A new report from the aerospace industry promotes the need to convince more students to study math and science and makes proposals to senior policy makers to improve those education disciplines.

[Monday, December 22, 2008] NASA Television will honor the 40th anniversary of the historic Christmas Eve broadcast by the Apollo 8 crew with special programming Dec. 24 and 25 on the NASA TV Public Channel (101).

[Monday, December 22, 2008] Barring any unforeseen delays, the second stage and fairing are expected to arrive at the Cape by December 28th and will be mated on December 31st, just in time for the New Year.

[Friday, December 26, 2008] CDR Fincke & FE-2 Magnus started their day with another download of last night's data of the SLEEP experiment from their Actiwatches to the HRF-1 (Human Research Facility 1) laptop as part of the week-long session with SLEEP.

»»FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation Notice of Approval on a Record of Decision for the Spaceport America Commercial Launch Site

[Monday, December 29, 2008] In accordance with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations and FAA Order 1050.1E, Change 1, the FAA is announcing the availability of the ROD for the Spaceport America Commercial Launch Site, Sierra County, New Mexico.

[Tuesday, December 30, 2008] NASA has completed a comprehensive study of crew safety equipment and procedures used during the space shuttle Columbia accident with recommendations for improving the safety of all future human spaceflights.

[Tuesday, December 30, 2008] NASA quietly issued a report today that deals with the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia and its crew. Specifically, the report derives important lessons from this accident that need to be considered in the design of future crewed spacecraft.

[Tuesday, December 30, 2008] The ALHAT system is designed to automatically detect hazards such as craters and boulders and then direct the lander to the safest touchdown location available. It is a job ALHAT must perform - on-the-fly.

[Tuesday, December 30, 2008] Apollo crews were heavily trained to recognize specific large-scale lunar surface features at or near the designated landing site. These features would help the astronauts find their way to a safe area as close to the planned landing site as possible.